​Lawsuits seek to nix net neutrality order

The Federal Communications Commission’s ruling on net neutrality that bans online traffic discrimination is now being challenged by lawsuits from telecom firms and an internet provider.

Less than a month after
the FCC agreed to adopt net neutrality protections during a
historic 3-2 vote, attorneys for USTelecom and Alamo Broadband
filed separate petitions on Monday this week asking federal
judges to review the ruling.

The suits — filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit and the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals, respectively — allege that that the decision reached by
the FCC during the February 26 vote violates administrative law
and infringes on the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.

As a result of last month’s ruling, the FCC will soon classify
broadband internet as a public utility and regulate it as such,
much to the praise of net neutrality advocates who hailed the
decision as a victory for preserving an open internet in the US.
Once the decision goes into effect, internet service providers
will be legally prohibited from blocking, throttling or otherwise
discriminating online traffic.

Nevertheless, both suits filed Monday compel the courts to review
the order on account of claims that the FCC’s decision is
“arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”

"The focus of our legal appeal will be on the FCC's decision
to reclassify broadband Internet access service as a public
utility service after a decade of amazing innovation and
investment under the FCC's previous light-touch approach,”
USTelecom Senior Vice President Jon Banks explained in a
statement on Monday. “As our industry has said many times, we
do not block or throttle traffic and FCC rules prohibiting
blocking or throttling will not be the focus of our appeal."

"The filing ensures that the association's right to appeal
the open Internet order would not be blocked,” added Walter
McCormick, USTelecom president. "We do not believe the
Federal Communications Commission's move to utility-style
regulation ... is legally sustainable," he said.

On the Alamo Broadband website, founder Joe Portman says he started the ISP
in 1994 “on the principle that everyone should have fast,
reliable access to the Internet, no matter where you are.”
Because the FCC’s ruling would regulate the service he offers to
sections of Texas, however, Alamo’s attorneys say the ISP is
“aggrieved” by the ruling and has standing to challenge
it in court, according to its filing.

In an email to Bloomberg Politics sent Monday, US
Representatives Fred Upton (R-Michigan) and Greg Walden
(R-Oregon) wrote that the “inevitable legal wrangling has
begun.”

“These filings are the first in what will undoubtedly be
years of challenges spurred by the FCC’s unnecessary and
inappropriate regulation of the internet,” Upton and Walden
said.

To the Washington Post, however, an industry
lobbyist who isn’t identified by the paper said that the Obama
administration and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, an Obama appointee,
will defend the agency’s ruling.

"These companies have threatened all along to sue over the
FCC's decision, even though that decision is supported by
millions of people and absolutely essential for our
economy," Matt Wood, a policy director at Free Press, told
the Post. "Apparently some of them couldn't wait to make good
on that threat."

Last month, Obama said the FCC’s ruling “will protect innovation
and create a level playing field for the next generation of
entrepreneurs.”

“I personally, the position of my administration, as well as
a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start
getting a differentiation in how accessible the internet is to
different users,” Obama said last year. “You want to
leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can
succeed.”

Responding to the filings, the FCC said on Monday that the
petitions were "premature and subject to dismissal."